Online Poker

Landing a college scholarship always has been, to some degree, a thing of chance. But funding your education by playing Texas Hold 'em, a popular form of poker? In the burgeoning online poker industry, a handful of sites now host tournaments for students, offering scholarship prizes worth as much as a year's tuition. The games don't require bets; the more hands you play, the more points you accumulate toward winning. In return, the poker rooms hope to cultivate a loyal base of players who will return to the virtual tables -- and play for cash.

WASHINGTON — About the only sure bet when it comes to gambling in Florida is this: Sooner or later, the issue will start an argument. For decades, legislators, activists and kitchen-table kingpins have debated whether more casinos should come to the state. But with gambling growing more popular nationwide, there's a chance Congress eventually could clear the way for card sharks — and vulnerable minnows — to skip the casinos and wager from their computers. At least three bills to allow Internet betting were introduced in Congress this year, and the issue gained enough traction that House lawmakers held a hearing in early December to debate the idea.

I love online poker, but I've never been 100 percent comfortable in that arena. I've had a hard time getting over one simple fact: Nobody has ever been able to convince me that playing on these websites run by offshore companies is legal. When I play, I half-expect someone to crash through my door in the middle of the night and drag me away in handcuffs. Adding to my discomfort about online poker's cloudy legal status is my intense fear of being cheated by offshore online poker rooms.

Could poker be legal? A New York federal judge has made a major decision that could affect players online and in poker rooms everywhere. The federal judge said poker was a game of skill, not of chance, so it's not gambling and not illegal. Teresa Gately, one of the owners of Drop N Aces Poker League, a free poker league in the Metroplex, said skill was everything in the game of poker. "There seems to be a stigma right now with poker, 'Oh, it's gambling.' Well, no, it's just a game like sitting down and playing scrabble or backgammon or chess," said Gately.

Poker pays off. At least, that's what many college students will tell you these days. The New York Times ran an article recently headlined, "Ante Up at Dear Old Princeton: Online Poker Is a Campus Draw," about college students who play poker. The article focused on a Princeton student who says he makes $120,000 a year by playing poker online and in casinos. Recently, I realized that the writer from the New York Times wasn't exaggerating about the popularity of college poker. In Valencia Community College's library on a recent Thursday, a guy next to me was playing online poker and browsing poker-strategy Web sites.

GAINESVILLE -- Instead of talking about his team's 80-58 win over Toledo in Friday's season opener, Florida guard Nick Calathes spent time saying he did nothing wrong. Six times. An internal investigation by the school's athletics department involving Calathes and the men's basketball team overshadowed the Florida Gators' full-court press on the O'Connell Center court. In light of a report Friday claiming Calathes had racked up a $600 online poker debt, Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley issued a statement before the game that the school found no NCAA violations.

Could poker be legal? A New York federal judge has made a major decision that could affect players online and in poker rooms everywhere. The federal judge said poker was a game of skill, not of chance, so it's not gambling and not illegal. Teresa Gately, one of the owners of Drop N Aces Poker League, a free poker league in the Metroplex, said skill was everything in the game of poker. "There seems to be a stigma right now with poker, 'Oh, it's gambling.' Well, no, it's just a game like sitting down and playing scrabble or backgammon or chess," said Gately.

The video game industry's largest annual trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, will be scaled down dramatically next year amid industry desires for a more intimate setting, organizers said Monday. "This is not a wake or a funeral. It's about changing E3 to meet the modern needs of the industry," said Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group that operates the show. The glitzy three-day extravaganza in May drew about 60,000 attendees.

Running off at the typewriter. . . . Which Donovan made the dumber comment this week -- Billy Donovan or Donovan McNabb? Donovan McNabb, quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, admitted he didn't know that NFL regular-season games could end in a tie, and then compounded his buffoonery by saying, "I would hate to see [a tie] happen in the Super Bowl and the playoffs." (Memo to McNabb: Believe it or not, the league actually allows playoff games and Super Bowls to be played until somebody, um, wins.

Poker has come to the mobile phone. The service from PokerRoom.com -- launched in April -- highlights the fast growth and accessibility of online gambling. The business has grown so much that investment bankers are circling the major players seeking lucrative new stock offerings. Yet any such offerings will not be in the United States -- the result of Internet gambling's great paradox. The U.S. market by far is the world's largest, but the government remains adamantly opposed to Web wagering.

When traveling for his job, Grayson Nichols often shares his workplace with "nine other guys – old, smelly, coughing . " He prefers working at home in Winter Park in the company of his girlfriend and dog — who are none of the above. This is the curious hand life has dealt Nichols as a professional poker player. More than 55 million Americans, many of them online, play poker for money, according to the Poker Players Alliance. So what does it mean to be a "professional"?

I love online poker, but I've never been 100 percent comfortable in that arena. I've had a hard time getting over one simple fact: Nobody has ever been able to convince me that playing on these websites run by offshore companies is legal. When I play, I half-expect someone to crash through my door in the middle of the night and drag me away in handcuffs. Adding to my discomfort about online poker's cloudy legal status is my intense fear of being cheated by offshore online poker rooms.

Running off at the typewriter. . . . Which Donovan made the dumber comment this week -- Billy Donovan or Donovan McNabb? Donovan McNabb, quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, admitted he didn't know that NFL regular-season games could end in a tie, and then compounded his buffoonery by saying, "I would hate to see [a tie] happen in the Super Bowl and the playoffs." (Memo to McNabb: Believe it or not, the league actually allows playoff games and Super Bowls to be played until somebody, um, wins.

GAINESVILLE -- Instead of talking about his team's 80-58 win over Toledo in Friday's season opener, Florida guard Nick Calathes spent time saying he did nothing wrong. Six times. An internal investigation by the school's athletics department involving Calathes and the men's basketball team overshadowed the Florida Gators' full-court press on the O'Connell Center court. In light of a report Friday claiming Calathes had racked up a $600 online poker debt, Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley issued a statement before the game that the school found no NCAA violations.

The video game industry's largest annual trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, will be scaled down dramatically next year amid industry desires for a more intimate setting, organizers said Monday. "This is not a wake or a funeral. It's about changing E3 to meet the modern needs of the industry," said Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group that operates the show. The glitzy three-day extravaganza in May drew about 60,000 attendees.

Landing a college scholarship always has been, to some degree, a thing of chance. But funding your education by playing Texas Hold 'em, a popular form of poker? In the burgeoning online poker industry, a handful of sites now host tournaments for students, offering scholarship prizes worth as much as a year's tuition. The games don't require bets; the more hands you play, the more points you accumulate toward winning. In return, the poker rooms hope to cultivate a loyal base of players who will return to the virtual tables -- and play for cash.

WASHINGTON — About the only sure bet when it comes to gambling in Florida is this: Sooner or later, the issue will start an argument. For decades, legislators, activists and kitchen-table kingpins have debated whether more casinos should come to the state. But with gambling growing more popular nationwide, there's a chance Congress eventually could clear the way for card sharks — and vulnerable minnows — to skip the casinos and wager from their computers. At least three bills to allow Internet betting were introduced in Congress this year, and the issue gained enough traction that House lawmakers held a hearing in early December to debate the idea.

When traveling for his job, Grayson Nichols often shares his workplace with "nine other guys – old, smelly, coughing . " He prefers working at home in Winter Park in the company of his girlfriend and dog — who are none of the above. This is the curious hand life has dealt Nichols as a professional poker player. More than 55 million Americans, many of them online, play poker for money, according to the Poker Players Alliance. So what does it mean to be a "professional"?

Poker has come to the mobile phone. The service from PokerRoom.com -- launched in April -- highlights the fast growth and accessibility of online gambling. The business has grown so much that investment bankers are circling the major players seeking lucrative new stock offerings. Yet any such offerings will not be in the United States -- the result of Internet gambling's great paradox. The U.S. market by far is the world's largest, but the government remains adamantly opposed to Web wagering.

Poker pays off. At least, that's what many college students will tell you these days. The New York Times ran an article recently headlined, "Ante Up at Dear Old Princeton: Online Poker Is a Campus Draw," about college students who play poker. The article focused on a Princeton student who says he makes $120,000 a year by playing poker online and in casinos. Recently, I realized that the writer from the New York Times wasn't exaggerating about the popularity of college poker. In Valencia Community College's library on a recent Thursday, a guy next to me was playing online poker and browsing poker-strategy Web sites.